


The shadow of a cat on the cave's wall

by laughingpineapple



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Atemporal Being, Future Fic, Gen, Time Is Wonky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-24 10:09:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: The cave is full of stars. The shadow is also full of stars, and so is Mae, and she knows it, this time. The shape which casts the shadow remains unknowable; nevertheless, on the following day, Mae will text Bea to describe her dream encounter as a "cool dude, all in all".





	The shadow of a cat on the cave's wall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Andian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/gifts).

> Thanks J for the help!!

They meet again in twenty-five years.

"After this you are not returning here," the shadow says. It is true, as all the shadow's words are true. Another truth goes unstated: time folds on itself and ebbs and rhymes. In the shadow's present, a vast and ever-collapsing 'now' which embraces the beginning and the end, their meeting is one and the same. Mae stands next to her younger self. She wishes the girl could see her, comfortable in her chequered flannel, tool belt heavy on her hips, brandishing her mop with janitorial poise. But she always did have such blind spots when it came to herself - this vision will fall through. It doesn't matter. Mae is not here for some sick timeline bending. She has crossed these lands again to find something she forgot, or didn't quite get, something to give back, a circle to close.

"I will tell you a second thing," the shadow says, shifting from its eternal present with the gravity of a rumbling glacier. Mae is here, in this future. She listens to this second thing. It echoes in her ears, she heard all this already, a long time ago, at night, in the woods. She is hearing it now. She is hearing it twice and it resonates between the person she was and the person she is, and it feels like she's heard a low background rumble of these truths every day of her life, and they have changed her, and she has changed them. There is a hole at the center of everything, the shadow says, and it is always growing… it is coming, and Mae is not escaping it, and the universe is forgetting her, and the universe is being forgotten, and there is nothing to remember it. Entropy is the end point and there is no meaning. In this absolute present, which she is starting to accept (has always accepted, as these things go), that distant point fills the horizon and is a constant, a cosmic vibration, a baseline.

And if _ that _'s the baseline, baby, there's nowhere to go but up. Kind of takes off the pressure.

But she got this already. This is not why she has come back.

"Bare existence, meaning nothing," the shadow says. Yes. She knows. "Your atoms are monstrous existence." She knows that too, with a pang - the smallest shapes, unstable, reaching out through immeasurable voids. Her form shakes for a second and an eternity, letting the starlight in, and she thinks she is looking at the shadow in the form of a cat for the first time now, it is a black hole of its own and keeps fragmenting into so many shapes which fall into it over and over. Eventually, the lines and angles are elementary enough for Mae to see past them and _ now _ she is seeing it for the first time, through this symbol which is not herself but exists in the shape of herself. There is nothing beyond it. All the same, it is a sum.

Mae blinks and reels herself back before the lines decay too and all is void, because it's not, it really isn't, it's a sum, she saw it and she shall carry this knowledge past this dream. And that is not why she has come back, either: it is this moment, the one that is coming now and always, when a scared, lost twenty years old girl has felt the weight of purposelessness cast upon her shoulders and is about to ask: "Does anything mean anything?"

It all leads back to this. The shadow's words have rung differently to her ears this time, which have made this conversation a different conversation, subjectively, and these different meanings have taken root, and Mae is on solid ground now. She pulls. At memory, at history. The course of events creaks and groans as it shifts, it pulls back but she does not care, she steps closer and takes her hand, through the decades. Does anything mean anything? It is not a question worth answering. What it is worth is a journey through endless night. It is worth holding herself in an embrace, dropping to their knees and lulling herself to sleep when she is tired and alone and defeated, falling into an ever-growing void. The mop is in the way - she kicks it to the side. This is the way time folds upon itself, she wouldn't say she's learned much of the big ol' mess that is life but she can offer this one answer. 

"I still have a question," says Mae to the enormity of the night sky once she hears herself snore. She pats the unruly tuft of hair on her younger self's head - getting a nap in this place should count for a thousand years of overdue sleep, good for her.

"Little creatures are crawling through uncaring atoms, and they are blind and they are torn apart and they are asking questions."

"Yes, I _ know _. But mine is special. For one, it's not about God."

"They are not asking questions about God sometimes," the shadow concurs.

"See."

It does not answer. It is up to Mae to keep the conversation going, which is funny in its own way, realizing that even giant astral cats out of time which may or may not be limited projections of unspeakable immaterial concepts can struggle with small talk.

"Can we walk together? For a while?"

It feels like it is staring through her and accusing her of cheating a little bit, because she is not asking a question about whether its boundless existence fits a certain set of human standards (it doesn't), nor is it asking it to define itself and through that definition create boundaries and be forced to exist within them (it would not have answered), but it's not too far off from either. Mae's question accepts that she will never get an answer that shall encompass the entirety of the figure that's looming over her. It is content with walking side by side and, if she is lucky, draw a few conclusions of her own. It's a bit cocky, too, but that comes with the package, and the shadow should know her by now.

"Little creatures are crossing these plains and they are getting lost, stranded far from their images of their homes."

It's a warning and one that rings true - oh, a pilgrim could go on forever in search of answers. A vagrant would go on forever to leave the other world behind. The sky would eat them all, wanderers and pilgrims alike, and it calls to her.

"I appreciate your concern. But I have dinner with Bea tomorrow, you know? I wouldn't miss it for anything in the world."

"So I can see that you are not getting lost. Uncaring atoms are wandering, not all of them are getting lost. Ropes can be cast over holes. We shall be walking together, until we find a hole that needs fixing."

"Hell yes. That's my job. One of them."

"Yes."

So they walk together. Mae picks up her sleeping self and carries her on her back like a slumped sack of potatoes, still brandishing her mop, and her back will kill her in the morning and that's okay. The shadow takes a step forward. Mae follows. The unknown constellations above them shine with a cold light that fills even the circle of an eclipse. She feels, as she steps out of the plain and into the dark, vast woods beyond, that a circle has closed. The shadow’s words, which still hang in the air in this eternal present, made little sense to her twenty-five years ago, and she has stewed in them until she fell in with their flow, and hearing them again now, she has accepted them as part of her, as much as her lungs or her spleen. She also feels that leaving a closed circle alone, all proper and untouched, and walking away just like that would be a remarkably un-Mae thing to do – good thing she’s not doing that. She’s shuffling her feet on the ground until that circle gets smudged and shoots off to a new beginning, as the woods close behind them and thick foliage muffles their words. What the shadow is saying now sounds alien to her ears; she thinks that in the distance, far from the path, she can see her older self move through the trees.


End file.
